I am a younger sister to an older brother who, to this day, I consider to be one of the coolest people on earth.

As kids, we were close in age (as close as possible without being twins) and seemingly understood each other well. That is, I agreed his GI Joes were awesome, we cracked up hysterically over the same cartoons and both went wide-eyed over Batman or 007’s cool gear. With family, we camped and fished and sailed and skied and rode horses and swam together. So, fully ignoring his complete lack of interest in my dolls or anything pink, I was well into adulthood still assuming boys and girls – at least those of a common spirit – were pretty much the same.

For the scope of this blog, we’ll gloss over the first several years of marriage when I thought men and women thought the same, or…